Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75062 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75062 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
“Baby, I gained fifty pounds since high school,” I said, smiling.
“Of what? Muscle?” she shot back. “That’s not Colin’s worry. He wants me—“
“To look like an underage girl?” I cut her off.
“I never really thought of it that way, but, yeah, I guess. Huh,” she said, brows furrowing.
“Huh, what?”
“I wonder if that’s why he won’t let me drink either. At dinner, he always has a drink, but I get sparkling water.”
“He’s fantasizing you how you were as a, what, seventeen-year-old? He’s like thirty. It’s sick.”
“I never thought of it that way, but it’s possible.”
Maybe that was why he hadn’t seemed to touch her yet, either. He was living out the fantasy of her as the pure, untouchable, likely virgin, cheerleader from his teenaged years.
If that was the case, it was fucked up. But it also worked in her favor.
Though I didn’t like that he had groped her recently. It said that his patience or his perception of her was changing, evolving. And there was no telling what might trigger it again. And worse.
As much as a part of me was probably dragging this shit out for reasons I was choosing not to analyze, I needed to cut that shit out.
It was time to move.
Within the next week.
I could bullshit my brothers all I wanted about wanting to make sure we knew everyone’s moves and schedules, I couldn’t bullshit myself anymore.
We had to get this done.
Each day with Cammie in that house was putting her more at risk.
I had to stop being selfish.
Even if it meant never seeing Cammie again.
Maybe that was for the best. My attraction to her and my strange preoccupation with her was weird and fucked up and probably not healthy for either of us.
“Fair warning, I am about to be the most unattractive you’ve ever seen me,” Cammie declared as the server brought the whole pie on the stand to our little plastic booth situated as far as possible away from the windows and with me facing the door so I could make sure none of Colin’s guys came in. “Because I am about to scarf down like two-thirds of this in twenty minutes. And if you wanted more, you’re shit out of luck,” she told me even as she started pulling one of the slices onto a plate. It was still too hot and most of the cheese pulled and slid off, but she was undeterred as she folded it up and brought it up to her mouth.
I knew several guys who said they found women eating hot. I couldn’t really say I agreed with that. But likely since I rarely shared meals with ones I wasn’t related to.
But watching Cammie fucking destroy her first pizza in four years? Yeah, that shit was way hotter than it had any right to be.
“I think I’m fifteen pounds heavier,” she groaned as we got up and made our way back outside. “You shouldn’t have let me eat that much.”
“I’m never gonna be the guy who tells you what to eat. Or what not to eat,” I told her as we rounded the corner to the lot where our borrowed car was parked.
“Well, that is refreshing. But you might want to reserve that judgment until you’ve seen me…”
She didn’t finish that thought.
Because my hand was moving out and reaching toward her face, my thumb wiping next to her mouth where the tiniest trace of sauce and grease were missed by the napkin before we got up.
Her lips parted a bit instantly as her eyes widened. I wasn’t imagining the heat there. I couldn’t. Not up that close.
My hand moved, going toward my own mouth where I let my thumb run down the inside of my lip, getting the sauce and grease off.
The little whimpering sound that escaped her at that moment was my undoing.
I lied to myself and tried to believe that if she had just continued to stare at me, that I would have done the ‘right thing’ and just opened her door and escorted her back to the coffee shop.
But with that little needy sound?
My self-control didn’t stand a fucking chance.
When my hand went out this time, it went around the back of her head, applying the barest bit of pressure, testing it out, seeing her reaction.
I didn’t anticipate her hands lifting, grabbing the material over both shoulders, and pulling until I had no choice but to lean down.
There was no way to tell then who was initiating what.
Our lips came together with a sort of fierce desperation, both of us knowing it was wrong, that we didn’t have the time for it, but that we couldn’t seem to fight it, either.
Her lips were demanding under mine, and it hit me as I deepened the kiss that she hadn’t been kissed or touched in over four years.
Not since my family’s actions completely turned her life upside down.